| Femme Vitale - Dawn Thomas: The Voice of Reason - Spring 09 |
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| Written by Charmian Christie | |||||||
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In a world of celebrity chefs, cooking competitions, and extreme food, Dawn Thomas takes an old school approach to teaching the culinary basics. With no cleavage shots, designer kitchens, or catch phrases, all attention is focused on the task at hand. Her agile hands chop, mix, sauté, and stir. Her friendly yet soothing voice brings a Zen-like quality to the instructional voiceover. But you never see her face or hear the f-word. It's not that she's camera-shy or reserved. Instead, Thomas has her priorities straight. It's not about her; it's about the food. "I'm really just a cook who wants to teach people how to cook," she says. An Unconventional Start  In her early 20s, Thomas travelled Europe for half a decade, waiting on tables and refusing to worry about her future. When asked what she wanted to do with her life, she looked at friends who weren't using their degrees and said, "It'll happen." Thomas had no idea "it" would be a serious car accident followed by a year of rehab. "I chose to take the positive from the experience," she says, and narrowed her choices down to seamstress or chef. After years of serving other people's food, Thomas tried cooking herself and was hooked. Little did she know the short hop from her home in Victoria, BC to Vancouver's Pacific Culinary Institute would catapult her career. She's fed movie stars and is now sharing her culinary knowledge and passion with people all over the world thanks to the Internet. She's also helping to feed hungry children as she goes. From Film Caterer to Filmmaker  Today, Thomas's title is Director of Culinary Media for Rouxbe.com, an online video-based cooking school. But before she made her own films, she delivered to the sets. She and her partner Joe Girard, a Red Seal chef, formed a mobile catering company, Freaky Beats & Eats. They played great music and served even better food from two 26-foot catering trucks they built themselves. Over five years, they made almost a quarter million meals for BC's thriving film industry. Their well-fed customers included the cast and crew of Dark Angel and the It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. "We felt like rock stars," Thomas says, but she's not sorry they moved on. "It was grueling work." Their days typically ran 14 or 15 hours (sometimes 23) often with a two-hour drive home at the end. "I remember Saturdays not being able to make a fist. I could barely use my hands, I'd been working so much." While catering presented the kind of challenge Thomas loved, it didn't allow for any time off. Rouxbe evolved as they looked at ways to make money that didn't require an annual 12-month commitment. When she and Girard decided to turn down the next movie contract to focus on their online cooking school, they worried about the backlash as much as the loss of income. But instead of hearing complaints, their former clients donated rigging gear, lights, and time to their new venture. "Thankfully we were good enough cooks that people were willing to help us out," Thomas says. "Good enough cooks" is an understatement. Not only did other caterers come onboard as investors, the North West Culinary Academy of Vancouver became an active partner. Despite no longer catering non-stop, the workload isn't much lighter. But Thomas doesn't mind. "I'm willing to work 7 days a week as long as I'm having fun." She answers customer emails at 3 o'clock in the morning, reads food magazines in bed at night, helps write the scripts, demonstrates the cooking techniques in most of their videos and does all the voiceovers. Nice Hands, Shame About the Voice  Although Thomas's current voiceovers are hypnotic, she wasn't a natural born announcer. She also admits the professional studio at Lion's Gate unnerved her. Describing the early voiceovers as "horrid," Thomas became The Voice because she "was cheap and free." How bad was she? "At first people would say, 'I hope you didn't spend too much on the voiceover.'" But Thomas rose to the challenge, improved her technique and is now redoing many of the old videos, in the comfort of their own in-house studio. Having conquered the spoken word, Thomas's biggest challenge is the written one. The devil is indeed in the details and she struggles to make her scripts clear and concise. Finding the perfect words is like tweaking spices. "Is this enough information? Too much? Should we say this or that?" In the end, Thomas and her staff strike a balance between a detailed explanation and information overload. Keeping It Real  For all that Thomas wants the words and instructions to be perfect, she insists on keeping things real. "We don't do any food styling whatsoever. What you see is how it ends up on the plate." Even unadorned, the food speaks for itself. "We eat everything after we film it," Thomas says. "Sometimes I have to get the camera people to stop moaning [with delight]." Although she devours glossy food magazines for their information, Thomas laments the dolled up dishes many photo spreads pass off as the final result. "I draw a line between plating and getting out the can of lacquer." To Thomas, an essential part of teaching cooking is handling expectations. She wants her viewers to be able to produce the food they see in her videos, not aim for a standard no one can achieve without spray paint and professional lighting. Feeding the World One Membership at a Time  Thomas is equally realistic about food availability, or lack thereof. Fifteen percent of every paid Rouxbe membership goes to the United Nation's World Food Project to feed hungry children. "As a company you just can't take, take, take," Thomas says. "You have to give back." Their program, dubbed Rouxbe for Life, is their way of paying things forward. "So far we've fed 63,000 kids through the UN program." [Note: This number is more than 71,000 as of Feb 12, 2009.] What's Next?  Five years travelling Europe. Five years as a film caterer. With Rouxbe approaching its fifth anniversary, will Thomas continue her pattern of shift? "We want to finish the cooking school and then? Who knows?" she says. While Thomas doesn't know what the future will bring, a Food Network show or food-porn book contract aren't likely options. Just like her food, Thomas keeps her ambitions real. "My dream is to be like a big fat Italian Nona where you serve everything family style and don't let food stress you out." All Photos: www.rouxbe.com Contact Information: Dawn Thomas 604-677-6000 This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it http://rouxbe.com/ Comments (0)
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